“And Remember, I Am With You Always”

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 21, 2016

Second Sunday in Lent

“And Remember, I Am With You Always”

Selected Texts

The disciples watched from a distance,

a safe distance,

every one of them fearful, nervous, anxious.

They all knew they should

scatter with the wind,

disappear into the wilderness,

but still they also knew they could not;

they knew they had to stay,

they had to watch.

Even as far away as they were,

they could hear the hammer ring

against the nails.

They watched in silent sickness

as their Lord was lifted up on the cross,

the post dropping into the ground

with a visible jolt.

They looked upon their Lord hung on the cross,

his cross between two other crosses,

the Romans always zealous with executions,

Jesus condemned to die

between two petty thieves.

None of the disciples said a word;

all of them were transfixed, numb.

But even in their silence,

all of them were praying,

praying that death would come quickly,

and mercifully for Jesus.

From where they stood,

they couldn’t hear the taunts,

the crowds jeering at Jesus,

mocking him:

“He saved others,

but he cannot save himself”

 (Matthew 27:42)

“You who would destroy the temple

and build it in three days,

save yourself

and come down from the cross!”

(Mark 15:29)

“He trusts in God;

let God deliver him now.”

(Matthew 27:43)

Quietly, the disciples slipped away,

the sight was just too much to bear.

Besides, they all knew it was over,

all over.

By sundown Jesus would be dead;

and within a week,

he’d be all but forgotten,

all but forgotten by everyone but them.

They knew they’d all have to go back to

the vocations they’d come from

before Jesus called them.

Peter, Andrew, James, and John

would take up their fishing nets again;

Matthew would go back to his work

as a tax collector.

They’d all go their separate ways.

Would they ever see one another again?

If they bumped into one another

on the streets of Jerusalem

at some future Passover celebration,

would they acknowledge one another,

or would they walk by,

heads down,

eyes averted,

as if they were strangers?

None of them, not even Peter,

recalled Jesus’ words to them

spoken not just once,

or twice,

but three different times:

“The Son of Man will be handed over

to the chief priest and scribes,

and they will condemn him to death;

then they will hand him over to the Gentiles

to be mocked and flogged and crucified;

and on the third day he will be raised.”

(Matthew 20:18ff; Matthew 17:22;

Matthew 16:21)

None of them remembered.

None of them:

“On the third day he will be raised.”

For all of the disciples, it was over.

Over.

But, of course, we know – it was not over.

On the third day Jesus was raised,

raised by God,

the linen wrappings of death

left behind in the tomb.

Christ alive, alive to Mary Magdalene,

alive to the eleven,

alive to all the world,

the promise fulfilled:

“And remember, I am with you always”

(Matthew 28)

This is the joy we will celebrate in just 5 weeks

as we gather here on Easter Sunday,

as we wave our alleluia wands,

as we shout out, “He is risen indeed!”

Jesus with us,

with us – always.

Jesus died on the cross,

and as we talked about last week,

we have to understand that,

acknowledge it,

accept it, in all its painfulness.

We cannot embrace the resurrection

without embracing the crucifixion.

We cannot get to Easter

without going through Good Friday.

But once we get to the resurrection,

we get to the promise,

the promise that Jesus will be with us,

with us here and now

calling us to new life here and now.

Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection

was as much a turning point in human history

as the flood in Noah’s day.

We talked about that last week.

But in the resurrection,

what was obliterated,

what was wiped away,

wasn’t humanity,

but the power of sin,

and the power of death.

We capture it in words we say

in our Brief Statement of Faith:

“God raised this Jesus from the dead,

vindicating his sinless life,

breaking the power of sin and evil,

delivering us from death to life eternal”

(Brief Statement, 10:23-26)

The Risen Christ calls us to new life

and in this new life

the only power sin has over us

is the power we let it have over us.

In this new life the Risen Christ calls us to

we have nothing to fear,

not even death,

for even though we will all take a final breath,

the promise is true, that

Christ is with always,

in this life

and in the life to come.

As the poet John Donne put it so lyrically,

“one short sleep past,

we awake eternally

and death shall be no more,

death, thou shalt die.”

Christ’s resurrection calls us to new life,

new life here and now,

As Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans,

“just as Christ was raised from death

by the glory of the Father,

so we too … walk in newness of life.”

(Romans 6:4)

This new life is hardly new, though;

it is the life God has called us to

through the pages of Scripture,

both Old and New Testaments.

It is the life that Jesus points to

in the gospel of Matthew,

when Jesus says that

what we do to the least,

we do as well to him:

how we talk about and treat

the poor,

how we talk about and treat

the hungry,

how we talk about and treat

the homeless,

and yes, how we talk about and treat

even the alien,

the immigrant, the stranger.

It is life one of our Ash Wednesday readings

calls us to

as we repent and turn back to God:

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
…If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness

and your gloom be like the noonday.

The Lord will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters never fail.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations

of many generations;
you shall be called

the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to live in.”

(Isaiah 58)

This is the life our Lord’s resurrection

calls us to live

This is the life that gives life to

the Risen Christ,

for aren’t we the Body of Christ?

Aren’t we Christ’s hands, arms, feet, voice,

Don’t we reflect Christ’s presence?

Don’t we reflect Christ’s light and love?

God challenges us through the prophet:

“Why do you spend your money

for that which is not bread,

and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me…

listen, so that you may live.”

(Isaiah 55:1-9)

Listen to what our Risen Lord teaches us;

listen to the life he calls us to live,

listen that we might live

and have life, true life,

truly rich life

in this life

and in the life to come.

Lent reminds us just as surely as Advent does

that we are living in the in-between time,

the time between our Lord’s birth,

and the day when our Risen Lord

will come again.

We are in a time of waiting.

But Lent reminds us even more than Advent,

that our waiting time should not be idle,

that we are to prepare ourselves for that day,

for the life to come,

shaping our lives now,

modeling our lives on Christ’s life,

living as Christ calls us to live – now:

“whoever says, ‘I abide in him’

ought to walk just as he walked.”

(1 John 2:6)

The Christ who is with us always

teaches us

guides us,

encourages us,

and at times, disciplines us,

even rebukes us.

when we stray from being

“repairers of the breach,”

when we stray from welcoming,

building,

nurturing, forgiving,

loving.

“The death of Jesus is for us nothing

if we have not died with him

[to the old ways, to the old life].

The resurrection of our Lord is for us nothing

if we have not been raised with him,”

(E. Brunner)

The resurrection of our Lord is for us

nothing,

nothing,

if we have not been raised with him,

raised to new life,

new life…

new life…

in and with

our Living Lord.

AMEN  

Can’t We Talk About Something Else?

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 14, 2016

First Sunday in Lent

Can’t We Talk About Something Else?

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

When I came to you, brothers and sisters,

I did not come proclaiming

the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom.

For I decided to know nothing among you

except Jesus Christ,

and him crucified.

And I came to you in weakness and in fear

and in much trembling.

My speech and my proclamation were not

with plausible words of wisdom,

but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power,

so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom

but on the power of God.

*******************************************

If we had screens here in the Sanctuary,

I would put an image up on them,

the way I do regularly

in my Wednesday morning Bible Study class,

an image of a painting,

a magnificent painting done 500 years ago,

part of an altarpiece created

for a monastery in France.

It is called the Isenheim Altarpiece

and it is actually a combination of

sculpture and painting,

large, and profoundly visceral,

even when you see it on a computer screen.

The main image in the center of the altarpiece

is a painting,

a painting of our Lord Jesus Christ,

a painting of Christ nailed to the cross.

The artist, Mathias Grunewald,

captured the horror of the crucifixion

in a way that I think eluded many other artists.

It is painful to look at the image of our Lord

his body broken, limp, lifeless.

Most churches of the Reformed tradition

don’t use scenes of the crucifixion.

In Protestant churches like ours,

the cross that hangs in the Sanctuary,

or on walls in offices and classrooms,

is empty,

reflecting our focus on the risen Christ,

the Christ of the resurrection,

the living Christ.

Go into a Roman Catholic Church, though,

or churches of some other denominations,

and you will see the crucified Christ:

Christ nailed to the cross,

Christ dead on the cross;

The Good Friday Christ,

rather than the Easter Christ.

Both depictions are correct,

both biblical,

and both appropriate.

In fact, both are necessary,

powerful reminders of our Lord’s death,

and our Lord’s resurrection;

of what happened on Good Friday,

as well as what happened on that first Easter.

Still, we have a tendency to skip over

the Good Friday Christ,

the Christ of the crucifix,

the Christ on the cross.

But we shouldn’t.

Artwork – paintings, sculptures,

works like the Isenheim altarpiece,

force us to stop, look, think,

take it in:

the Christ Paul preached,

the crucified Christ.

The cross for us is now a

symbol of the power of Christ,

but back in Jesus’ day

it was a symbol of death,

of degradation.

There was no more horrible way to die,

no more humiliating way to be executed,

than to be hung on the Roman executioner’s

favorite tool,

the tool used for the worst criminals,

“escaped slaves

or rebels against the Roman empire.”

(Moltmann, 33)

The hill called Golgotha

on the west side of Jerusalem

was lined with crosses,

a grim reminder to anyone

coming into the city from the west

that Jerusalem was in the iron grip

of the Roman empire,

and that obedience to Rome without question

was the wisest, safest road to walk.

The odiousness of the cross did not stop there;

for a Jew to be hung on the cross

was also to be cursed,

the words of scripture so painfully clear:

“anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse”

(Deuteronomy 21:23)

It was on such a cross,

on such a cursed tree,

that our Lord was nailed,

that our Lord was hung;

it was on such a cross that our Lord died.

Can’t we change the subject?

Can’t we talk about something lighter,

more pleasant?

It’s a cold winter’s day;

can’t we talk about something

that will warm us?

No.

Paul didn’t.

He didn’t tell his listeners in Corinth

that he was there to tell them about Jesus

as their “personal Lord and Savior;”

as the one who was going to

open the floodgates of abundance to them.

No – we heard Paul:

“For I decided to know nothing among you

except Jesus Christ,

and him crucified.”

We can change the subject…

but not until after Lent.

Lent is the time when we should

walk with our Lord to Jerusalem,

take every painful step,

including the walk to Golgotha,

the walk to the cross.

Even pastors find it much more appealing

to leap from the exuberant

Hosannas of Palm Sunday

to the joyful alleluias of Easter.

But we cannot get to the alleluias of Easter

without going through Good Friday,

without letting the sounds of Hosanna fade

to be replaced by the shouts of

“Crucify! Crucify!”

We cannot get to Easter

without coming face to face with

the abhorrent reality of the crucifixion.

We must face the reality that our Lord died,

as the Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge has written,

“horribly,

rejected and condemned

by religious and secular authorities alike,

discarded onto the garbage heap of humanity,

scornfully forsaken by both

elites and common folk,”

(“The Crucifixion”)

The cross troubles us,

confounds us,

unnerves us,

unsettles us.

Why did our Lord have to die such a horrible death?

Why did Jesus have to be the fulfilment

of the words of the prophet:

“By a perversion of justice he was taken away.

…For he was cut off from the land of the living,

…They made his grave with the wicked

…although he had done no violence,

and there was no deceit in his mouth.”

(Isaiah 53:8ff)

As God reminds us,

“My thoughts are not your thoughts

nor are your ways my ways…

for as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

(Isaiah 55:8)

We’ll never know the mind of God.

But what we can understand is that

the cross was the decisive turning point

in human history,

an end as sure and certain

as when God brought the rains in Noah’s day.

Only this time,

God didn’t scrub the world of sinful humans.

Instead, God scrubbed the world of sinfulness,

by taking on humanity’s sin himself

in the form of his Son on the cross.

The crucifixion revealed the callowness,

the shallowness,

the sheer hypocrisy of what

was called religion,

of faith practices,

and not just of those who were the leaders,

but of all the people.

The crucifixion cast a bright light

on God’s words through the prophet Isaiah:

“these people draw near with their mouths

and honor me with their lips,

while their hearts are far from me,
and their worship of me

is a human commandment learned by rote;”

(Isaiah 29:13)

Through the cross,

God’s children were

forgiven their callowness,

their shallowness,

their hypocrisy –

and called to new life.

And it is no different for us,

even two thousand years later:

through the crucifixion,

we too are forgiven

our callowness, our shallowness,

our hypocrisy,

and called to new life.

Paul puts this new life squarely before us,

so we will not misunderstand:

“How can we who died to sin

go on living in it?

Do you not know that all of us

who have been baptized into Christ Jesus

were baptized into his death?

Therefore we have been buried with him

by baptism into death,

so that, just as Christ was

raised from the dead

by the glory of the Father,

so we too might walk in newness of life.”

(Romans 6:2-4)

And this new life calls us

not to a life of consumerism,

materialism,

not to indulge ourselves

in endless, resolute ideological fulminations,

not to be puffed up with pride,

or walk through life indifferent

to the needs of those we don’t call friends,

but to live as Christ did,

the Christ “who,

though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

(Philippians 2:6-8)

This is the Christ we are called to follow,

the Christ who says to us,

“If any want to become my followers,

let them deny themselves

and take up their cross and follow me.”

(Mark 8:34)

The Christ who shakes us

to the bottom of our sandy foundations

with his words,

“For those who want to save their life

will lose it,

and those who lose their life for my sake,

and for the sake of the gospel

will save it.”

(Mark 8:35)

This is the Christ Paul knew.

This is the Christ Paul followed.

This is the Christ Paul preached.

This is the Christ Paul calls us to join him in following:

humble,

obedient,

a man, fully human,

who lived not for glory,

or for honor,

or for riches,

or even comfort,

but for compassion,

goodness,

for mercy, for love,

the Christ who broke down barriers

as reached out to all,

but especially the outcast.

The theologian Jurgen Moltmann has observed,

“the symbol of the cross in the church

points to the God who was crucified

not between two candles on an altar,

but between two thieves

in the place of the skull,

where outcasts belong,

outside the gates of the city.”

(Moltmann 40)

This is the Christ we are called to follow.

As you begin your Lenten journey,

walk with Christ,

all the way to Golgotha,

making Paul’s words your own:

“I have been crucified with Christ;

and it is no longer I who live,

but it is Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live in the flesh

I live by faith in the Son of God,

who loved me and gave himself for me.”

(Galatians 2:19-20)

AMEN

Sing a Song of Praise and Thanksgiving

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

February 7, 2016

Sing a Song of Praise and Thanksgiving

Selected Texts

Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty firmament!

Praise him for his mighty deeds;

praise him according to his

surpassing greatness!

Praise him with trumpet sound;

praise him with lute and harp!

Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!

Praise him with clanging cymbals;

praise him with loud clashing cymbals!

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!

(Psalm 150)

The psalmist sings his praise

to the Lord our God,

and, as he does so,

he invites us to sing our praise

to God as well.

The psalmist invites us,

encourages us,

teaches us,

even expects us to join him

in singing praise to God,

lifting up our voices to God

with words of praise and thanksgiving.

A quiet prayer,

no matter how fervent -

that’s not what the Psalmist wants;

no soft song sung with reticence.

“Sing and shout with abandon!”  --

That’s what the psalmist

cries out to us to do!

“Sing and shout out with gusto!”

Sing and shout with all our hearts,

all our minds,

all our strength,

all our soul.

Sing, and shout,

for we live in the light of God’s love,

for we are blessed by the Lord our God,

the Lord our God,

the One from whom all blessings flow.

Yes, there is a time to lift up

words of lament,

words of pleading,

words calling out to the Lord,

“God help me.”

The psalmist teaches us that, as well:

“How long, O Lord?

Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I bear pain in my soul,

and have sorrow in my heart all day long?

…Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!

Give light to my eyes,”

These are searing words

expressions of great pain

from the psalmist,

words that surely resonate with all of us,

for we all have had those times in our lives.

And yet, even that Psalm, Psalm 13,

ends thankfully, joyfully,

with praise:

“But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

because he has dealt bountifully with me”

Even the most powerful psalm of lament,

Psalm 22,

that palm that begins with those haunting words,

“My God, my God,

why have you forsaken me?”

Even this psalm ends with words of hope,

words of praise:

“I will tell of your name to

my brothers and sisters;

in the midst of the congregation

I will praise you:

…[for the Lord God] did not hide his face from me,

but heard when I cried to him.”

And so we sing with the psalmist,

as we should:

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;

praise him in the heights!

Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his host!

Praise him, sun and moon;
praise him, all you shining stars!

Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!

… Mountains and all hills,

fruit trees and all cedars!

Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!

Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!

Young men and women alike,
old and young together!

Let them praise the name of the Lord,…

Praise the Lord!
(Psalm 148)

How good it is to simply stop,

step back,

take a deep breath,

reflect,

be still and know that God is here,

in our lives, present;

that God watches over us;

that God blesses us:

“The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
I have a goodly heritage.

I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.

I keep the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand,

I shall not be moved.

Therefore my heart is glad,

and my soul rejoices;

my body also rests secure.
…You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;

in your right hand are pleasures

forevermore.

(Psalm 16)

Let all God’s children be thankful,

for all God’s children are blessed.

Praise the Lord!

AMEN